Rebekah Brooks charged with phone hacking

Former News of the World editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson are among a group of eight journalists and executives who face 19 charges over the phone hacking scandal that has shaken
Rupert Murdoch
’s global media empire.

Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said in London that seven will be charged with conspiring to intercept communications without legal authority between October 13, 2001, and August 9, 2006.

The eighth person, former private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, faces four charges, but not conspiracy. He was convicted in 2007 of hacking the mobile phones of aides to the British royal family, which Mr Murdoch’s
News Corp
insisted at the time was due to a rogue reporter.

The decision is a huge blow to Mrs Brooks, the former chief of News Corp’s UK newspaper operations and a favourite of Mr Murdoch’s, because she and Mr Coulson will be charged in connection with illegal access to the phone messages of a murdered ­schoolgirl, Milly Dowler.

Mrs Brooks was a strong campaigner for victims of crime and became friends with the girl’s mother.

She strenuously denied the charges.

After widespreading phone hacking by News of the World came to light Mr Murdoch shut the paper and later decided to spin off his global newspaper and book assets into a company separate from News Corp, which will focus on movies and television.

Mrs Brooks faces three charges relating to Dowler as well as accusations of conspiracy to access the voicemail messages of a former British trade union leader, Andrew Gilchrist.

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Mr Coulson, who was British Prime Minister
David Cameron
’s head of communications before stepping down under pressure last year, faces four charges including access to private messages belonging to two former Labour home secretaries, David Blunkett and Charles Clarke. He will also be charged with accessing the voicemail of famous soccer player George Best’s son, Calum.

The others facing charges are a former News of the World managing editor Stuart Kuttner, his news editor Greg Miskiw and former assistant editor Ian Edmondson, the tabloid’s ex- chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, a former assistant editor James Weatherup, and Mr Mulcaire.

The Crown Prosecution Service named the victims affected. They include
Paul McCartney
and his former wife, Heather Mills; a coterie of politicians including friends and associates of outspoken former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott; the opposition’s spokesman for the Olympics, Tessa Jowell; Britain’s most famous chef and cooking author, Delia Smith; a smattering of actors and topless models including Abigail Titmuss; sportspeople; and even a professor of journalism at Lincoln University, John Tulloch.

Prosecutors said there was a schedule containing the names of over 600 people believed to have been victims of hacking. They are reported to include actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Sienna Miller, and Jude Law.

This is the first round of charges since Scotland Yard launched Operation Weeting, its investigation into the practices of the News of the World.

Of the five other people who were on police bail over the hacking allegations, three will not be charged. A decision on the other two has been deferred.

Mrs Brooks and Mr Coulson have denied for years they were aware of rampant phone hacking at the paper, which was exposed by The Guardian newspaper and is being investigated by the Leveson media inquiry.

Last night, Mrs Brooks issued a statement insisting that she was not guilty: “The charge concerning Milly Dowler is particularly upsetting not only as it is untrue but also because I have spent my journalistic career campaigning for victims of crime. I will vigorously defend these allegations."

The news emerged as David Sherbourne, a barrister for many of the victims of the hacking scandal, gave his final submissions at the Leveson inquiry into media ethics that there was a “nauseating closeness" between some police officers and journalists.

He accused some tabloid papers of using “blackmail, intimidation, door stepping and harassment" and that hacking was not “hermetically sealed" in News Corp and “was so widespread it was an in-joke between The Sun and Daily Mirror at an awards ceremony."

The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, told The Guardian a few weeks ago that the Prosecution Service had used a broad interpretation which would mean it was not absolutely necessary, in bringing a criminal prosecution, for a voicemail message to have been hacked before it was listened to by the person who owned the phone.

Previously there was a heated argument between the CPS and the Metropolitan Police over whether it was illegal to listen to a voicemail message after the person who owned the phone.

The Metropolitan Police stated this week that it believes there are 4775 potential victims of phone hacking, of which 2615 have been notified.

Deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers told the Leveson inquiry that the Metropolitan Police had notified more than 702 people who were likely to have been victims. Ms Akers also said that Operation Elveden, which is investigating alleged illegal payments by journalists to police and other public servants such as prison guards, has extended beyond News Corp papers and has found alleged payments from Trinity Mirror and the Express newspaper group.